This is one of the primary reasons I DON'T blog.
Since my background (before starting the writing gig) is all in real estate, law and insurance, I tend to look at it from that angle.
A real estate agent isn't allowed, eithically or legally, to "stigmatize" a piece of property to a buyer in most parts of the U.S. This includes spilling your guts about the house/land in question, such as that it was formerly a crack house when the neighborhood was bad, or a murder/suicide was committed there, etc. If it doesn't affect the structure or the way it is NOW, it shouldn't come up because a person might not buy it, or the value can get trashed.
Same thing with law. We constantly told our clients, "Tell it to the judge, not the newspapers." Slander, libel, defamation of character. Even if the allegations are all true, the lawsuits can still happen and many people only remember the SUIT, not the result.
From the insurance angle comes "lost profits/loss of standing" and those sort of claims were not only hard to estimate (so the estimates were HIGH) but the juries usually awarded something to the person defamed, just because it was
possible that a slanderous statement turned the public against them--even if only briefly.
So, what does that mean for the author/publisher relationship? Well, quite simply--how many romance writers can read that statement and decide NOT to submit to the publisher? Writers are, as a group, very prone to taking offense on behalf of their fellows. What happens if they can't fill their list the next year, or sales take a nosedive, all because of one author's complaint? I have no problems with finding fault with a publisher, but I'd never take it to a public forum like these boards or a blog. It's just not worth it to me, as a writer, to have readers think me unprofessional and refuse to buy my books because I can't take care of business in the proper manner--whether or not it's true.
One of the comments on Jennie Crusie's blog was very telling. It was by an editor who took the side of the publisher and realized that if it had been her company being discussed, she would most definitely have taken offense at the statement. It would have changed her from working hard for the author, to only doing the minimum necessary under the contract--without going that extra mile.
It's sort of like baseball strikes to me. It doesn't matter whether the players are right or wrong, they're the ones not showing up on the field to entertain the masses . . . not the management.
I'd rather the people in the stands know that me and management are playing nice together, even if we yell behind closed doors after the game.